I'm so far behind!!!

So, no pics this time, I'll try to post some in the next few days but I'm not somewhere I have access to them tonight.

Happy April to everyone. I had to work the night before April Fools and since we get off at 3am we decided to play a nice joke on the on-coming shift. It was so much fun, especially since I have never done an April Fools joke before (I always want to but I'm just not creative enough I guess). Anyway, for anyone who doesn't know I work on a maternal/child unit in a hospital so we decided to add a few fictional patients to our roster. We put up one obvious april fools pt, named April Fools with history of 15 pregnancies, multiple drug use, bipolar, no prenatal care, etc. Then we added a more believable patient, 14 weeks pregnant, normal sounding name, here for nausea and vomiting. One of my co-workers gave a stellar performance and gave a detaled report on history and vitals and meds given, etc. They ate it out of her hand! Then right before she finnished giving report I went off to our observation room, turned on the light and tv and pulled the curtian and door most of the way shut. Then I went to the report room and started looking through our expectant mother charts until I found the one I wanted and told the on-coming shift about this pt who had just come in! Repeat c-section scheduled to come in later in the week, thinks she is in labor, dr already knows, just wants us to check her out and run a fetal heart tones strip to make sure she's not in labor and get back to her. I told them I had her on the monitor and the strip was looking good. I didn't think she was in labor because she wasn't acting like she was in pain, so just go in after a bit and check on the strip. Then we all got out of there as fast as we could. As we were leaving I saw one of the nurses go shut the door the rest of the way, without looking in! It was too much fun!!!

When the other girls I was working with came back that afternoon for their next shift they found their lockers taped/sewen (!!!) shut and then when they walked into the report room the day shift had put dry ice all over the floor and it was all smokey and the first two girls screamed and one jumped up on the couch! I guess they got us back alright, but I think we did pretty darn good because it was quite a while before they realized that the nausea/vomiting pt was a fake!

Luke is so much fun! He is learning so much every day. Right now his favorite thing to say is "Ohhh". He makes his mouth into a REALLY small o the more he does it. It is so funny. One day when he was at my Mom's my brother Tim was playing with him and he was trying to get him to say something other than Ohhh so every time he picked something up and held it out to Tim, Tim would say the color of the object... And Luke would very solomly say, "Ohhhhh"!

Luke has figured out how to turn in circles and he loves to practice. when he first started a couple of weeks ago his circles were pretty big and he had to wrap his arms around his body in the opposite direction he was going and sort of crouch down as he turned! So funny! Now he turns almost on the spot and he can go several times in a row so that he gets dizzy and falls all over the place, which he thinks is really funny (and so do we)!

I'll post more later!

stats

Luke got two new teeth yesterday, the front top ones! Yeah for a break in the teething!

Also we finally had his one year appointment with the Dr on the 11th. He is 29 1/2 inches long and weights 21 lbs 8.6 oz. His growth rate has definitely evened out, at least for the time being. I think he is a little on the smaller side for his age but still well within normal range.

As most of you know we are trying to follow Dr Sears' adjusted vaccine schedule to spread the vaccines out a bit. he has the MMR vaccine seperated and only gives one a year starting at age one. Unfortunately the company that makes those vaccines decided not to make them seperately any more so there are only a few left. In order to still give them seperately we decided to give them about a month apart (as commonly recomended for live vaccines). So far so good, no fever or anything!

party!

We had Luke's birthday party today! I was worried that it would be too cold to be outside so instead of going to the park like I had originally planned we met at church in one of the little kid Sunday school rooms so that the little kids would have plenty of toys to play with. Not everyone was able to make it but we had a pretty good turn out for the late notice and we had a lot of fun.

I made two cakes, both from a box and they both turned out fine.

Luke just loves kissing babies. This morning in the nursery he laid about five kisses on a 7 month old girl before she decided she had had enough. I think this is the first time he has ever had another baby kiss him back! I know it looks like they are Frenching and this is definitely going to be one picture he will regret later, but in person it was very sweet.

He enjoyed playing with balloons for the first time, I think in the pic below uncle Ben is trying to teach him how to make it squeak with his fingers. He popped one too at one point though I'm not sure how he did it. He looked a little scared but then he saw us all laughing so he decided it must be ok.

Here is the all important song and blowing out of the candles...

Luke ate his first cake, mostly just ate the frosting as you can see below.

....and tried his first pop!

He had already gotten most of his presents but he got a few at the party, a really cute jacket that he will probably wear next fall from Ben and Andrea, a coloring book and crayons from Mark and Amanda, and two Dr Seuss board books (Mr Brown Can Moo, Can You? and the ABC book) and a toy phone from Amy and Glen.

I had mentioned before that he is very verbal, and I can usually guess what he wants, but usually he just grunts. He does use signs, "lights" is his favorite, and he just learned bye-bye a week ago, and occasionally he uses "milk" for nursing. He also babbles a lot and says Ma Ma Ma, Ba, Da, and Ya Ya Ya, and has been saying those things for a long time now, but I'm not convinced that he means anything specific when he says them. This week though he has started saying "Hello", or his version of it, whenever he picks up the phone! For a short time you could hear him saying it on our answering machine. Some how when he was playing with the phone one day he managed to get just the right combination to make his own outgoing message. I think several people heard it and thought that Greg had just let Luke pick up the phone and that eventually he had hung up on them. I think I called the number three times before I realized that it was a recording and I wasn't really talking to my baby! It was really cute but Greg told me today he made a new one so if you missed it, too late, it's gone. )-: So, is "hello" his first word? I'm not sure....

goodbye

My great grandma died this morning. She was 97 years old and she had several perfectly clear days before she let go. Several perfect days of seeing her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and her one great-great-grandchild. She enjoyed every minute of it, you could see it on her face. What a gift! It still hasn't really sunk in to me yet that she is gone, I think I almost thought that she would always be here because she had come so close to going so many times before and always hung on. She was an amazing woman, I know I only got to see bits of her life but I know enough to know that. I know that she loved God and that she is probably enjoying herself immensely right now up in heaven. I am excited to see her there someday myself to know what she would be like with out her constant pain and her slow old body holding her back.

I love you, Grandma! I miss you, especially your kisses and your love, but I'll see you later!

1

My baby turned one today, March 3rd 2009 at 11:41 pm! Here is a pic from earlier today, poor baby has a cold and some seriously red cheeks!

He is changing so fast, but the changes are more subtle. He understands so much more each day, but I can't tell you always how I know he knows, I just can see it! Sunday he figured out how to wave bye-bye! He was so proud of himself he waved bye-bye the whole walk home! When I ask him to get mommy's shoes for me he goes and finds my shoes and brings them to me one at a time, and he can match them up correctly too! He now sits through the reading of ALL of his board books at a time, sometimes more than once! He loves to point at the kitties and say his version of Meow! (I don't know why he loves the kitties, I was sure he would like the doggies best but he only points at the kitties!)

He plays with cars at Grammy's house...

He likes to be naked...

He climbes onto or into anything he can, the sofa, the coffee table, the toy basket...

He loves to snuggle and give mommy kisses on the nose! He is supper sweet. I love him so much! Happy birthday baby!

Lights!

Well, this post is going to make up for the lack of posts recently...

Luke has been very verbal lately, sometimes he talks low and very loud like this...




Other times he talks way up high, like this...

He loves it when I let him play with the phone and he knows now that you are supposed to put it to your ear to talk in it, not just hold it in front of you, so he grabs the phone from me whenever he can and then shoves it up towards my ear and then I am supposed to talk. Usually I say something like this... "Hello??? Who is it??? Aunt Becca! Hi aunt Becca!!! How are you? Are you playing video games with uncle Joseph? What is Mosely doing? Is he barking?" etc. Usually when I say "Aunt Becca!" he gets this huge grin on his face and gets very excited. So sweet!

He has also started to try to make animal sounds when we read books together that have animals in them. Mostly they all sound the same and he is most consistent with Doggy sounds. Usually it comes out "whoo, whoo!" very high pitched. Once in a while he will try to imitate my inflection for other animal sounds, like a kitty's meow.

He is also very intent on being independently mobile and exploring new ways of moving.

This is a toy from Mimi and Pawpaw, so far he really likes to stand on it and kind of rock his body back and forth to get it to move a bit, or just sit in it and play. Thank goodness he hasn't fallen yet but I am sure it won't belong before he rocks it just a little too hard.

Two other things he really likes to do lately are spit, as seen below, and he has learned the sign for lights! I think he understands some of our other signs that we use but other than shaking his head no this is the first sign he has ever used regularly himself. It started about a week and a half ago and he still loves using it. Most of the other signs I use regularly are more useful than fun, like milk for nursing and bed for when he wants to sleep, so maybe that's why he doesn't use those, he just really likes lights.

These next pics are from a short outside excursion, short because he wouldn't hold my hand and he desperately wanted to walk on the street! He is getting really fast but the sidewalks down our street are really broken and uneven and I was terrified that he would fall and I would have to take him to the emergency room for stitches since he refused to hold my hand at all.

(well, these sidewalks look ok but the ones on the other side of our house, which is where I took him next so that he wouldn't always be going straight towards the busy street, are awful.)

Today we did something special and went to visit my great grandma. We haven't gone much because it is really hard for me to get up early enough to go after having worked all night, and she hasn't been awake any of the times we have made it out recently. Lately though she has stopped eating and her children made the decision not to force her to eat but to let her go if that was what she wanted. Interestingly enough after not eating for a few days she woke up and for the past few days she has been very alert and clear. I'm not sure what exactly is going on inside of her but this has happened before and all of the sudden she was alert and wanting to eat again, so who knows what will happen this time. Either way we are all enjoying spending time with her. She was so clear and remembered all kinds of things while we were there. She smiled and said she only had a little pain, not too bad. She gave us each kisses and told us she loved us and she sang! Time with her like this is sooo precious.

In other news there is a breastfeeding conference coming up in March that I am looking forward to, one that I can get continuing education credits for! My parents are going to visit my sister in Vermont for the first time, I am so jealous! And Luke's birthday is coming up, not sure how we will celebrate yet so leave me a post if you have ideas for a fun party for a one year old and a bunch of adults!

I DO IT!

Luke likes to do it by himself! For the longest time he was content to let me feed him and didn't ever grab for the spoon, but now he wants to be a big boy! We had eggs, green beans and canned pears tonight (which he loves as if they were candy). I let him do the beans himself and thankfully by the time we got the pears out he was ready to let me do them for him. He did really well with the beans though. I showed him how to use his little fork from grandma Mimi and he ate all of his beans. I think about half of them he actually put in his mouth with his fingers instead of the fork, but even those times he often picked them up with the fork and then took them off with his finger and put them in his mouth. He is getting so big!

He is getting so big so fast, tomorrow is his 11 month birthday and I can hardly believe he will be one in a month! I saw a friend today who has a little girl only about a week or two younger than Luke, but she looks so much more like a baby than he does. She does not have nearly as much hair and she isn't walking yet so she seems a lot more like a baby still. She said something to her baby while we were talking about how she has a lot to learn, and I know that feeling of being so excited for the next stage, but right now I am ready for him to slow down just a bit. I'm not quite ready for my baby to turn into a little boy. He is starting to nurse less at night, sometimes he sleeps ten hours without waking up, and even though I know he will probably still want to nurse for a long time yet, I have mixed feelings about this new step. Part of me really enjoys the return of freedom to sleep however I want without worrying about waking Luke. On the other hand I'm glad he isn't doing it everynight because after a night or two I really miss having him snuggled up next to me. I guess it's good that weaning is a process and not an overnight change for my sake as well as for his. (for anyone wondering I plan on letting him "self wean" unless something comes up that would require us to wean sooner, so like I said, I'm guessing he will be nursing for a good amount of time yet, not just a month)

Our new bathroom is kind of stuck in time at the moment. The sink is still not installed because we have to put the baseboard in behind it first and Greg hasn't had time. Also no door, lights or mirror yet, though all are sitting just outside the room. We have the shower and toilet working and I put up the curtian just to see what it looks like, so pretty! Also, to my mom-in-law, the towels you got me for Christmas are a pefect match! Thank you so much! Anyway, here is what it looks like right now, I can hardly wait for it to be finnished, but I'm guessing I'm going to have to wait until my father-in-law's next visit (don't tell Greg I said so ;-).